Gaily the Troubadour by Professor Gawky

Title: Gaily the Troubadour

Author: Professor Gawky

Publisher:  Not known 

Source book: Northbridge Rectory by Angela Thirkell

We never meet Professor Gawky in person, and perhaps that's just as well. Every single character who mentions her has something awful to say. And no-one has a good thing to say about her book which is obviously rather trashy.

Even characters we never meet, such as the wealthy American benefactor Walden Concord Porter, disliked her so much at first sight that he donated a considerable sum to further the Biographical Dictionary of Provence (which is to say to fund Mr Harold Dowling’s research).... principally, we suspect, to put Professor Gawky's nose out of joint.

Mr Villars, the Rector of Northbridge, somewhat shamefacedly admits to reading this book because the library had sent it by mistake on a Saturday, and he had nothing else to read. Mrs Villars said wasn't that the book about the Vidame des Égouts who made his wife eat her lover's heart? And Miss Pemberton said scornfully that Professor Gawky speaks of a heart, but the merest tyro knows it was the lover's liver and lungs the husband served at dinner.

I wonder how you cook lungs? In Provence I dare say you cook them with peppers and aubergines. Yuk!

Sister Heath comes to take care of Miss Pemberton when she is taken ill, and she asks to borrow a book about the Troubadours, because Miss Pemberton was talking about them and it sounded just what she liked, a nice love story, and Mr Dowling nobly offers her a copy of the book he despises so much, Gaily the Troubadour, because he thinks she’ll enjoy it.

Next morning at breakfast he listens kindly to Sister Heath’s artless criticism of the book and wishes  Professor Gawky had been there to hear it.